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Update Saturday afternoon: In reading through the comments, its appears as if a lot of other folks have had problems installing Windows 8.1 and a lot of you haven't. Me too. I had trouble on two machines and no trouble on a third. For those of you who haven't had trouble -- that's great -- but it's pretty clear that some have. This is not entirely unusual for an operating system update (note what happened with recent iOS 7 update)

Update Thurs 11:30 PM ET: A lot of people have asked what repair tool the technician used to repair my disk's file system. Frankly I wasn't watching closely enough to know for sure, but if you are having trouble, consider using the error checking tool described here.

(Update at 1:45 PM ET). Microsoft's PR firm read the story and had a tech support person call me. He took control of my desktop PC and fixed the problem. I wish everyone could get that level of support. (Scroll down for more.)

Update Thurs at 12:15 ET: Win 8.1 is finally working on my laptop, but not my desktop)

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just not tech savvy enough to upgrade machines from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1. After all, I've only written 4 books about Microsoft Windows and am pretty new to the operating system, considering that I've only been using Windows since the day they launched Windows 1.0 in 1985.

So, here is how my morning went.

I woke up at 6:00 AM to upgrade my brand new XPS 8700 Desktop PC, which arrived about two weeks ago with Windows 8 installed. It started out OK. I went to Windows.com and saw that Windows 8.1 is here. I then clicked download and the process started. So far so good. After about a half hour the system told me that my machine needed to reboot to continue. I let it reboot but nothing happened. The Dell logo showed up on the screen but Windows didn't boot. I waited long after I saw no disk activity and hit the power button. I then restarted the machine and got an error message that included a number but no clue as to what went wrong.

No upgrade for me

The good news is that it did boot back into Windows 8.0. I then repeated the process with exactly the same results.

Let's try it on a laptop

OK. If I couldn't upgrade my desktop, I'd try it on my laptop. This time I went to Windows.com in Internet Explorer and got a message telling me that Windows 8.1 would be available on October 17th. But it IS October 17th. So, I fired up Chrome and for some reason Chrome did get me to a page telling me the Windows 8.1 is here with a link for the "free update."

I clicked on the Download icon and it took me to the Windows store but the store was empty. I couldn't see any icons. Then I stared at my laptop for about a half hour with no evidence of anything happening. No hour glass or any other indication that a download was in progress. Finally -- after I had all but given up, the laptop told me it needed to reboot to install Windows 8.1. I then waited as Windows updated me of its progress installing the new operating system. I liked having that progress report, but why did it leave me hanging for so long during the download process with no clue as whether the upgrade would ever even happen until it decided it was time for a reboot.

And, just because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided to try to update the Dell one more time. As I wrote this paragraph (and at this point I was using a Mac because was the only machine in my office that was working at the time), I was staring at the Dell logo, waiting (rather impatiently) for Windows to at least try to boot. That logo had now been on the screen for about 15 minutes, making me pretty confident that it's not going to work (update: after 20 minutes I hit the power button and am now back in Windows 8.0)

Finally some good news (sort of)

Eventually Windows 8.1 did install on my laptop. It then took me through the configuration process and, for some reason, asked for my Wi-Fi password even though Wi-Fi was working fine before the upgrade. Now I'm ready to start exploring Windows 8.1. Well, at least my laptop is ready. My desktop PC is still stuck in Windows 8.0 and I'm feeling a bit too exhausted to explore Windows 8.1 on the laptop other than to notice that the Windows start button is back but that it doesn't do anything useful. It just brings you back to the tile screen which is a great interface for tablets, but not all that great for PCs, or at least not for the hundreds of millions of us who already know how to use the Windows desktop.

Microsoft PR and tech support to the rescue

And, after this post had been online for about a half hour, I got a call from Microsoft's PR folks who said that some of the problems might have been related to the rush of early downloads. They also arranged for a tech support person to call me. I guess getting a call from Microsoft with an offer of help is one of the perks of being a tech journalist. I wish everyone could get that level of support.

After giving the support person the ability to remotely access my machine, he ran a diagnostics and repair program and was able to spot and fix the problem. He then re-installed Windows 8.1 for me and the installation process proceeded without any more hitches. I'm now using Windows 8.1 on my Dell desktop PC.